Madeleine Albright on Barriers Broken and Barriers that Remain

May 7, 2012

Madeleine Albright broke through huge barriers during her years in the Clinton administration, first as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, then as Secretary of State. She was a leader in what had been, until her arrival, an all-male club—the world of national security and international relations.

Ms. Albright, who later this year will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, says she never wanted to be considered a woman secretary of state, but as a secretary of state who was a woman.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal's Rebecca Blumenstein, Ms. Albright discussed her pioneering career, obstacles she has overcome, and the continuing struggle for women's rights around the world. Her latest book, Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948, has just been published.

Here are edited excerpts of their conversation.

Madeleine Albright, Former U.S. Secretary of State
Genesis Photos for The Wall Street Journal

REBECCA BLUMENSTEIN: We've been talking about the status of women in America, how far things have come and how far things have to go. When you graduated from Wellesley in 1959, the expectations for women were not particularly great. You told me your commencement speaker was not exactly inspiring.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: I did go to Wellesley, a women's college. And I am of a kind of strange generation which is transitional in terms of women who wanted to go out and get jobs. A friend of mine did a study of the classes that ended in nines. The '49 class were people that were going to get married and have what were called traditional marriages. The '69 class, which is Hillary Clinton's class, already knew that they were going to have careers. We were kind of in the middle.

Our commencement speaker was Neil McElroy, the Secretary of Defense, because his daughter was in our class. We all remember the words slightly differently, but what he said was, "Your job when you graduate is to get married and raise interesting sons." It was slightly off-putting.

On the other hand, the motto of Wellesley, in Latin, is Non Ministrari sed Ministrare: Not to be ministered unto, but to minister. We translated it not to be ministers but to be ministers' wives.

So there really was a whole series of things that took the women of my generation a little bit of time to push forward and be like the class of '69.

MS. BLUMENSTEIN: You started your working career relatively late. You had a couple of jobs, including as a journalist. But you graduated from school, got married very quickly, and did not start your diplomatic career until age 40.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, what happened, I got married, I really waited a long time—three days after I graduated. And I did want to be a journalist. I had been one of the editors of my school newspaper. My husband was a journalist.

I did what you're supposed to, worked on a small newspaper while he was in the Army. And then, this is classic. We went to Chicago, where he worked for the Chicago Sun-Times. We were having dinner with his managing editor, who said, "So what are you gonna do, honey?"

I said, "I'm going to work as a journalist." And he said: "I don't think so. You can't work on your husband's paper because of [Newspaper] Guild regulations. And you would not want to work on a competing paper."

Instead of saying what I might say today, I just kind of saluted and did something else. I worked for a while at Encyclopedia Britannica, then I had my twin daughters, then I went to graduate school and did a lot of volunteer work. In 1977, I started working as chief legislative assistant to Sen. Ed Muskie.

Then, in '78, I went to the Carter White House. That was the first time I really had a full-time job. I made a rule that whenever my children called, I would take the call. But there was a time that I was on the Senate floor with Sen. Muskie. And they said to Katie, "Well, your mother can't talk to you. She's on the floor with Sen. Muskie." When I came home she said, "What were you doing on the floor with Sen. Muskie?"

Women in the Workplace

Boys Club

MS. BLUMENSTEIN: You served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. for many years. In your first book, "Madame Secretary," you wrote about how it took you a while to gain confidence in meetings. You felt that it was a boys club. That men didn't really listen to you.

MS. ALBRIGHT: I think everybody's had this experience. Even before I went to the UN, I often would want to say something in a meeting—-only woman at the table—and I'd think, "OK well, I don't think I'll say that. It may sound stupid." And then some man says it, and everybody thinks it's completely brilliant, and you are so mad at yourself for not saying something.

At Georgetown in the '80s, I thought about what I would teach women who wanted to go into international affairs. I didn't want to set up a women's studies program. I thought women should learn to operate in a coeducational atmosphere, because, especially in national security and international affairs, it's male-dominated.

One of the issues I kept saying to my students is you have to learn to interrupt. When you raise your hand at a meeting, by the time they get to you, the point is not germane. So the bottom line is active listening. If you are going to interrupt, you look for opportunities. You have to know what you're talking about.

Then I get to the U.N. I am the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. I am a member of the Cabinet and of what's known as the principals committee that makes national-security decisions. I go to my first meeting—and lots of the meetings don't take place in that fancy room. They're in a back room where it's informal. I get there and there are 14 men of different races sitting there looking at me. And I thought, "Well, I'll just wait and see how they feel about me and whether they like me and whether I like them."

Then I looked at the sign in front of me that said United States. And I thought, "If I don't speak today, then the voice of the United States will not be heard." It really was almost an out-of-body experience. Of all the things I had told women that they had to do—and then I had to do it. It is not easy. And people make fun of you.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government. And not because they were all male chauvinist pigs. But because they had seen me through this very long trajectory. I had been a carpool mother, or a friend of their wife's, or a staffer. I had made lots of coffee and did lots of Xeroxing. And they thought, "Well, how did she get to be secretary of state when I should be secretary of state?" So I did have more problems there.

Stealth Campaigning

MS. BLUMENSTEIN: You have written that just acknowledging you wanted the job of secretary of state was a big step for you. Then came the very difficult noncampaign campaign you had to wage. Some of "the wise men" had counseled you not to be very aggressive about going for the job. But you were going up against George Mitchell, Dick Holbrooke, and you quickly realized that if you really wanted this job, you were going to have to work a little bit and use all the back channels you had.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, the interesting thing is, I had this great job as U.N. ambassador which I really liked, and standard procedure is they ask whether you'd like to stay on in a second term and what would you like to do.

Leon Panetta was chief of staff. He asked me to come in, and asked, "Would you stay in a second term?"

I said that I'd love to, and that I loved my job, but that I had thought about it and would love to be secretary of state. I can't believe I did it.

Then the issue was what did one do? I think it's the best job in the world. But you do not campaign for it. At least visibly. One of the things that was really an issue was I did not want to just be a woman secretary of state. I wanted to be a secretary of a state who was a woman, but not just chosen for that particular reason.

It was interesting, because President Clinton would call the various candidates in to talk to him about what the job was about, and what we would do. And I remember one of the "wise people" said, "You shouldn't be campaigning." And I just kind of looked…knowing full well that there was an awful lot of other stuff going on that the men were doing.

Then—I don't want to know who it was, but it was the dumbest thing anybody ever did—someone said, "Madeleine's on the list but she's second-tier."

MS. BLUMENSTEIN: And this was published in a newspaper.

MS. ALBRIGHT: Then the women's groups pushed massively on it. And I made clear I was prepared and ready to do the job. But you never go out there and say publicly that you want to do it. You say, "Oh, I'm so honored," you know…

Better Networkers?

MS. BLUMENSTEIN: At that time, you wrote about the network of power among men in Washington and many places in business, and that it kind of comes a bit more naturally to men, that whether it's sports or the bar or the golf course, that men more naturally navigate a network of power relationships, and that women were focused more on charity and philanthropic means and weren't focused enough on power. Do you think that has changed?

MS. ALBRIGHT: It's changed some. But not as much as with men. I think women are really good at making friends and not good at networking. Men are good at networking and not necessarily making friends. That's a gross generalization, but I think it holds in many ways.

What we have begun to see is that, as women get into a variety of positions, networking is very important. We really understand that we have to help each other. The hardest part—and this is not totally over—is there are not that many jobs at the top. And there still is this idea where we need one woman.

So what settles in is what I call "the queen bee complex," which is: "Why would you want to help some other woman when that's the only job that's out there?" The bottom line is, the more we have a cadre of women moving up the scale, and it doesn't seem threatening, and people realize that women actually work much harder than men, and realize that they need more women in these jobs, I think that goes away. But I think many people now know my statement which appeared on a Starbucks cup, which is that there's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other.

Networking is a real important part.

MS. BLUMENSTEIN: What is your sense of the progress of women in politics? When you were named secretary of state, a columnist wrote, "The boys are catatonic, half of D.C. is in shock." It was the highest-ranking position a woman had ever obtained in U.S. government. To this day we haven't had a woman vice president or president. I don't know if you have any predictions of when that will occur. But more broadly, do you think the progress of women is continuing apace? Or has there been some plateauing?

MS. ALBRIGHT: It's zigzagging. I have to say though my youngest granddaughter when she turned seven a couple of years ago said to my daughter, "So what's the big deal about Grandma Maddie being secretary of state? Only girls are secretary of state." In her lifetime that would be so.

Barbara Mikulski was just honored for being the longest-serving woman in Congress. I think the numbers keep changing.

We are very hip on the fact that America's always No. 1. On this we are not, in terms of the number of women in our legislative branches and obviously as head of state. We need to push on that.

I hate to say this: It isn't all men's fault. I think some of it is our own attitude and approach. Some of it very healthy, that women want to make choices about their lives and how they want to spend their time, and what they value. It's different in everybody's case.

I have worked very hard to have a woman vice president and a woman president. I am hoping the time will come, because I believe we have a lot of women that would make very good presidents. The issue some people may differ with me on is that people say the world would be entirely different if it were run by women. I think it is true that we are more seeking consensus and don't have such big egos and have a variety of different ways of trying to get along. But anybody who says that the world would be better has forgotten high school. It depends on who the women are.

Conflict in Kosovo

MS. BLUMENSTEIN: What was the most difficult decision you made?

MS. ALBRIGHT: Well, the most difficult one is also the one I'm proudest of. When I was at the U.N., I thought it took us too long to get into Bosnia. I saw more different diplomats than any other American. They came up to me all the time saying, "Look, people are really dying or being ethnically cleansed or raped. Why doesn't America do something?" We finally managed to do that.

Then I was secretary of state when similar things were happening in Kosovo. And because America is not a warlike nation and there was the hangover of the Gulf War, people were not eager to move into that area. President Clinton wanted to do Kosovo, but it was very hard persuading the bureaucracy that that's what should be done.

It really was a matter of trying to move the process to involve ourselves in Kosovo. I felt that we could make a difference with an air war. Question was whether it would work or not. And then, what happened the first days of the war—the weather was bad. The Serbs put out decoys.

Then, I come into my office one morning and my executive says, "Sit down." I said, "What?" He said, "Just sit down." He said, "We have just bombed the Chinese embassy by mistake." And so people called it Madeleine's war. They said it was going to be a disaster. It would go on forever.

When we won it, they called it something else.

That was the hardest. But it was my proudest because when it was over, I went back to Kosovo, to Pristina, and there were thousands of people saying, "Thank you U.S.A." I felt it was the right thing to do. And there's a whole generation of little girls in Kosovo whose first name is Madeleine.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think a lot of women perceive the political process now as quite antagonistic. What's the compelling argument to get women to step up for political office?

MS. ALBRIGHT: I don't know what is going on exactly. Partially, there has been amazing criticism of the women that have run. I did work for Geraldine Ferraro. She was the first one that went on a federal level. And it was appalling, the kinds of things that she was expected to know or do.

She went on Nightline with Ted Koppel. He was asking her such unbelievably detailed questions about nuclear missiles and throw weight, and a variety of things that they would never have asked a man.

But there are additional problems that we ourselves create. Just as an example, her press corps was primarily women. Those same women were trying to prove that they could be tough reporters and were scrutinizing her. It was very peculiar to watch. They had something to prove, and they proved it by being very critical of her.

The other thing that happened was that we have a tendency to project our own weaknesses onto another woman. I don't think men do that particularly. We were somewhere in the Middle West, and a housewife said, "I am a housewife. I want to know how Geraldine Ferraro can talk to a Russian. I can't talk to a Russian." Well, nobody was asking her to talk to a Russian. But there was kind of this sense, "If I can't, she can't." We don't help each other.

I have certain issues. I support women candidates, but I cannot support a woman that I don't believe in. I would prefer to vote for a man who believes in choice than a woman who is pro-life. We have to be able to make distinctions and not look as though we are not feminist enough if we don't support every woman. We need to have that kind of a choice.

'Criminal not Cultural'

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Cherie Blair, the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has said that we in this country forget that in much of the world women are still pretty much considered to be property. What can women in the U.S. do to address that issue?

MS. ALBRIGHT: It is an unfortunate fact that in many parts of the world women are considered property. An awful lot of injustice is obviously due to that; not just women's status in the home, but all kinds of laws that are even more discriminating.

It is something we have to have on our minds all the time. When I became secretary of state, I made women's issues central to American foreign policy. Not just because I'm a feminist, but because it's a fact that if women are politically and economically empowered, societies are more stable.

Women are more than 50% of almost every country in the world. Countries rob themselves of the resources of women if they keep them as property. It isn't that women can't find work. It's just that women don't get paid for their work and are not recognized properly. It's something that has to be on the international agenda all the time.

We have to be very careful, though, not to mirror-image completely. Not all women want to be like American women. I think we have to respect whatever it is that they want.

We have to figure out how to help. We have to push for women's education, women's health. It is our responsibility. What I can't stand is when terrible things happen to women and somebody says, "Well, that's cultural."

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